This project is to promote medical wastes management and on-site consultation. For promoting medical waste management, we printed 25,000 posters and sent to the hospitals, clinics, clearance and disposal organizations and medical associations, updated the information of EPA’s medical waste management website, and held 10 meeings of medical regulations and policies. For assisting the hospitals and treatment institutions in compliane with the regulations, we analyzed the medical waste treatment capacity in Taiwan, drew up a guideline about improve waste management for medical institutions, treatment/recycling institutions, and evaluated the sterilization efficacy for ten medical waste autoclaves. For promoting mercury-containing waste management, we held on-site consultation in 5 hospitals to implement mercury waste classification, and to establish the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) of mercury spills. We also tested a Field Portable X-ray Fluorescent Analyzer (FP-XRF) for scanning mercury-containing waste and evaluated technical and economic feasibility, and it is worth to for further research. For promoting the sterilization and recycling of chlorined-plastics medical waste, we investigated and established the recommendation purchase list of 306 alternative medical devices, suggested the chlorined-medical device material labeling should be operated in coordination with other countries, and held on-site consultation in two hospitals and reported the environmental performance evaluation. For home medical waste management, we proposed home medical waste management and the cleanup system and investigated the home medical waste type, quantity and disposal situation in Taiwan, including needle, peritoneal dialysis waste, and pharmaceuticals. We estimated household needle wastes about 282 ton/yr, peritoneal dialysis wastes about 2,468 ton/yr, and the maximum possible recycling pharmaceutical wastes about 210 ton /yr.
